A Half-Century Old Remembrance

CAREFREE AND CLUELESS

Fifty years ago today I was a carefree young man who had recently received his induction notice to report for duty in the United States Army the middle of December.  It was at the early stages of what would become known as the Viet Nam War - a non-declared military action that eventually took more than 58,000 American lives and caused a rift in this country that lasted for a decade.  However, at that time not many people would have anticipated how it ended up.  Life was good for me.

A PERFECT MORNING - SHATTERED
The morning of November 22, 1963 I was cruising toward Santa Monica in my 1957 Chevrolet convertible, top down, on the way to measure a home for carpet for my father's business - a job I'd held off-and-on between semesters in college and, at that time, prior to joining the Army.  It was a typical Southern California day - perfect, except I couldn't find any music on my radio.  Finally I just stopped pushing buttons and twisting the dial and listened to the palaver that was coming from my dashboard.

THE UNTHINKABLE...
Then I heard the message - President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas.  Soon I realized the traffic around me had gradually begun to slow to well-within the legal limits as people heard the news and began to contemplate what it meant.

A DIFFICULT MOMENT
Eventually I made my way to the tidy neighborhood in Santa Monica and knocked on the door of the home where I was supposed to measure several rooms.  An elderly gentleman - probably about my age now - slowly opened the door.  He, and his wife standing with him, had tears in their eyes and I could hear the television commentator in the living room behind them speculating about the events in Dallas that morning with a strained note of urgency in his voice.

GRACE DURING GRIEF
I offered to reschedule our appointment, recognizing just how distraught they were, but they graciously declined and showed me the rooms to be measured.  For the next half-hour or so I went about my job and they sat, holding hands on the couch in the living room, quietly sobbing as the anxious, confused reports continued to spill out of the old black and white television set.

THE FINAL, TRAGIC NEWS
Finally, just before I finished my work, news came that the president had, indeed, died from an assassin's bullet a few minutes earlier.  I wrapped up my duties, wiping tears from my eyes, and offered my condolences to my customers before I left.

A BLUR...
I don't recall much about my drive back across the Los Angeles basin to my home.  My other appointments had been canceled for the day, so I just went home.  I do recall wondering what this tragedy meant, for our country and for me, personally.  Was it just the beginning of an attack on our country? There was much prattle on the radio and television about that possibility at the time.

APPREHENSION
I wondered what this event would mean to my enlistment in the Army a few weeks hence.  I didn't pay much attention to politics then, but I found myself wondering what kind of president Lyndon Johnson would make, and what kind of a Commander-in-Chief he would be.  I later found out.

THE BEGINNING...
I suspect memories of that day and subsequent events will creep into my mind from time to time today, just as they have ever since that day fifty years ago.  Most of us who were alive and beyond the age of ten years old at the time still recall it vividly.  Kennedy's murder, and the subsequent assassinations of his brother, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.,  left scars on this country that are still visible today.

TENSE AND INTENSE TIMES 
Remember, this was a time in our country when we were still tense about the Cuban Missle Crisis a year earlier.  Just a few months later three young voting rights activists were murdered in Mississippi and a few days before I was discharged from the Army two years hence, a cross was burned on the lawn of a black sergeant at Fort Rucker, Alabama - my final duty post deep in the armpit of the South.  These were not good times in our country.

AMERICA CHANGED FOREVER

John F. Kennedy's assassination was the beginning of events that changed American society forever, with the advent of the drug culture, riots in large cities across the country and that damnable, divisive Viet Nam War.  Four students were killed by skittish National Guardsmen at Kent State University during an anti-war demonstration in 1970.  I still contemplate the 10% of the men of my helicopter flight school class who didn't return from Viet Nam.  Many members of my generation carry still-festering wounds from that time in their lives.

VIEW THIS CLIP IF YOU WISH
Here's a short, grainy not-quite-six-minute video clip of Walter Cronkite, often described as "the most trusted man in television", delivering the news of Kennedy's death.  It was a sad day for this country...

MEMORIAL DAY - 2008

MEMORIAL DAY - WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
For many Americans the Memorial Day holiday means the official launch of summer. That extra day we tack onto the weekend today means that, under normal circumstances, tens of millions of Americans drive somewhere to enjoy the holiday. Few really take the time to contemplate what this holiday is all about.

JOE BELL'S COLUMN TODAY
This morning my friend and Daily Pilot columnist, Joe Bell, presents us with his take on Memorial Day, HERE. As usual, Joe does a great job of describing his recollections of "his war" and the reluctance of many who fought during WWII to tell their stories.

HEARING THE STORIES
Joe is right. The generation that fought and won WWII - Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" - are leaving us at the rate of around 1,000 per day. The pool of human spirit that locked arms and fought to defend our country, and later built it into the dominant industrial and economic power in the world, will soon be gone and with them may go many untold stories of heroism, valor and sacrifice that the rest of us really do need to hear.

"MY WAR"
The same can be said for those who fought in "my war" - the Viet Nam Conflict. That war - yes, it was a war - cost us more than 58,000 young Americans and tore at the very fabric of our country for more than a decade. Unlike WWII, where most Americans pulled together to defeat the common enemy and later build our country, "Viet Nam" became a metaphor for derision and anger. The societal wounds opened by that war continue to fester to this day, more than thirty years following the end of hostilities.

PAINFUL MEMORIES
My peers who fought in that war have also been reluctant to talk about their experiences. The combination of the pure horror of war and the fact that the Viet Nam war was so unpopular have kept many of them mute over all these years.

MY COUSIN'S UNTOLD STORY
I have a cousin who is a couple years younger than me. He came to California from his home in the Midwest to attend school while I was in the Army in the mid-1960s. When my tour of service ended I returned home and, when the semester ended, he went back home to continue his education at Kent State University. As fate would have it, he was drafted and became an infantry soldier in Viet Nam. He survived his tour of service and went on with his life. Despite being part of a very supportive family, with three younger brothers and a sister, he never discussed his experiences in the war with anyone - not even his wife.

LETTING IT ALL OUT
Then, a few years ago, we traveled to his home for the marriage of his daughter. After all the turmoil that surrounds such an event was over and the kids were on their honeymoon my cousin and I sat at his kitchen table late one night, just kind of unwinding from the event, when he began taking about Viet Nam. Once he started talking it all just kind of poured out.

THREE PURPLE HEARTS
He spoke of the three purple hearts he received for wounds sustained in battle. He spoke of the near-misses he'd experienced beyond those three injuries. For example, as he and his platoon woke one morning to head out on patrol, one of his mates accidentally stepped on my cousin's glasses, which he had placed carefully beside the leg of his bunk. Although my cousin was willing to go on patrol without his glasses, his platoon sergeant refused to permit him to join them and he remained behind until a replacement pair could be sent from Saigon. That morning two dozen men left on patrol. None returned. They were caught in an ambush and slaughtered along a dark jungle trail.

DEADLY MISTAKES
In another incident my cousin was on patrol when one of his compatriots discovered an unexploded LAWS rocket. That's a projectile fired from a disposable, light-weight launcher that some American and South Vietnamese troops carried. His sergeant was furious about finding an unexploded round, blamed it on improper use of the weapon and told my cousin to pick it up and take it back with them to their camp where there would be a class about how to properly use it. My cousin refused because it was a "live" round and could explode any time. After a short argument the sergeant had another man bring it back with them.

LESSONS LEARNED THE HARD WAY
The next day one of my cousins mates came to fetch him for the class, which was to be held in a bunker within the compound. My cousin told his friend that he wasn't going anywhere near that thing because it was still a live round. As he said those words they heard an explosion. The round blew up and killed or severely wounded 17 soldiers, including the sergeant and their platoon leader.

THE HORROR OF WAR
Listening to his stories that late night at his kitchen table I realized that my cousin's experience in Viet Nam was very similar to that of the character Charlie Sheen portrayed in the movie, "Platoon".

STORIES YET TO BE TOLD
Those men, who served our country in an unpopular war, deserve our respect for their service, too. They deserve to have their stories heard. The young men and women who volunteer to serve this country today in distant venues, like Afghanistan and Iraq, also deserve respect for their service and sacrifice. They, too, have stories to tell. We need to listen to them and thank them for their service to our country.

A GRATEFUL NATION SAYS THANKS
Today, Memorial Day, 2008, would be a good time to begin that process.